State of the climate: warming, with no sign of waning

NOAA has released an annual report detailing the state of the climate for the …

Every year since 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released an annual report detailing the state of the climate. Early versions were typewritten and authored by a handful of experts. The new version is a shiny, 218-page PDF penned by more than 300 scientists from around the world. Nevertheless, the message has changed little over the years: the world is warming.

The 2009 report continues to document a number of weather-related records, the number of which seem to be growing every year. This year's highlights: The hottest decade on record. The third-lowest Arctic sea ice extent since 1979. The warmest and second-warmest years on record for India and Australia, respectively. And carbon dioxide concentrations that are increasing at a rate well above average.

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Also notable in the 2009 report is the amount of space dedicated to explaining the methods and data behind the sections on climate change. A two-page sidebar in the chapter on global surface temperatures (“How we know the world has warmed?” in chapter two [PDF]) details three major climate models for the layperson. The authors even constructed interactive figures—complete with links to the original data—so anyone can probe the data for themselves.

“Despite the variability caused by short-term changes, the analysis conducted for this report illustrates why we are so confident the world is warming,” Peter Stott, head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Hadley Met Office, said in a statement. “When we follow decade-to-decade trends using multiple data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world.”

Global average surface temperatures have risen 0.2°C above the 1990s average and 0.3°C above the 1980s average. Those values are large given the short time span, but seem mild considering that the report estimates 90 percent of the warming over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans.

The polar regions are again proving especially vulnerable to the warming climate. Arctic sea ice extents have been reaching repeated record minimums. And while the Antarctic sea ice was near normal levels this year, the Antarctic Peninsula has been warming at a rate five times the global average. Boreal ecosystems have been hit hard with rising permafrost temperatures and lengthening green seasons, or the time between plant green-up and senescence.

Glaciers—another climate change victim—continued their global retreat. Preliminary data suggests 2009 will have been the 19th consecutive year where more glacier ice was lost than was gained. Greenland’s glaciers that spill into the sea lost 101 square kilometers of ice, pushing total losses over 1,000 square kilometers for the decade.

The authors of the report drew on 37 different variables—seven more than just two years ago—ranging from air temperature to seawater carbon dioxide levels to subsurface ocean currents. Ten of these received in-depth commentary and analysis.

The report also details the finer climate patterns that help explain year-to-year variations. The previous years’ La Niña disappeared, replaced by an intensifying El Niño. Sea surface temperatures began noticeably rising in June 2009 and were 2°C warmer by December. This transition, the authors note, is largely responsible for the decreased hurricane and cyclone activity in 2009. The report does not include any weather data from this year, which NOAA points out is on track to be the hottest ever recorded.

Another post that shows how in the tank Ars is for global warming. Wake up, the liberal PC thug agenda means:1. Less Jobs2. More socialism3 Less Wealth

They do not have your best interests at heart. Temperatures have not gone up noticeably since 1998, in fact they have actually gone down. "Global Warming" is just another big government socialist attempt to create a post-America without freedom or liberty.

Another post that shows how in the tank Ars is for global warming. Wake up, the liberal PC thug agenda means:1. Less Jobs2. More socialism3 Less Wealth

They do not have your best interests at heart. Temperatures have not gone up noticeably since 1998, in fact they have actually gone down. "Global Warming" is just another big government socialist attempt to create a post-America without freedom or liberty.

best post ever. i almost forgot i was reading Ars and thought i was reading my local newspaper's comment section.

"Global average surface temperatures have risen 0.2°C above the 1990s average and 0.3°C above the 1980s average."

So the 2000s are 0.3degC above the 80s. That's 0.15degC/decade, or 1.5 degC/century. How does this compare to the latest IPCC projections?

Estimating using a linear rate of change, which I dont think is the case, though I suppose it could be approximated as such over a short period of time. It's a fair calculation, I just doubt it's steady enough to extrapolate to x/century.

Assuming the facts are true, whats the actual impact we're supposed to read from this? Over the centuries/millenia doesn't the earth go through heating/cooling cycles? It's not my field, but I believe I've read data suggesting that. One of the biggest issues has always been whether global warming was "our" fault (ie, "we're screwing up the planet!"). You see heavy handed rhetoric from both sides of this issue. I'd be much more interested in an indepth editorial on what we actually know about global climate changes over extremely long periods. Is this something to worry about, or are we simply on the upward slope of a temperature sine wave that has covered millenia?

Right-wing radio and the sympatico talking heads will either ignore it or spin it. Ya know those "Global Warming Hoaxers™" will stop at nothing to take away our God-given™ right$ to shit on everything, consequences be-damned.

Why? I really want to know why they try to make this a political issue? Because Big Business™ shouldn't have to have regulations? We have all sorts of regulations on people. We call them "laws." Rhetorical question, I know. But their attitude just pisses me off.

Another post that shows how in the tank Ars is for global warming. Wake up, the liberal PC thug agenda means:1. Less Jobs2. More socialism3 Less Wealth

They do not have your best interests at heart. Temperatures have not gone up noticeably since 1998, in fact they have actually gone down. "Global Warming" is just another big government socialist attempt to create a post-America without freedom or liberty.

You post the one outlying year as your only goalpost this is nonsense and a falsehood that has been debunked on many occasions.

If you actually could argue on the issues stated in the article (speaking in the range of decades and not 1 year) you would quickly be shown to have no factual base to argue from.

But you know that and so do we all. If you have nothing of value to add to the conversation then stay out of it and let the adults talk.

Another post that shows how in the tank Ars is for global warming. Wake up, the liberal PC thug agenda means:1. Less Jobs2. More socialism3 Less Wealth

They do not have your best interests at heart. Temperatures have not gone up noticeably since 1998, in fact they have actually gone down. "Global Warming" is just another big government socialist attempt to create a post-America without freedom or liberty.

ModerationComments like this will be moderated as trolls unless they are supported with some fact. If you're going to dispute the science, bring some science to back it up. Talking about "more socialism" and "less wealth" are off-topic.

I understand we can talk about increases and decreases, but how do we decide what "normal" is in this case? Is it the average over the data period? Observing exposed land/ice that hasn't been exposed in thousands of years? Conformance to some ideal amount?

It's sad that I have to add this disclaimer, but: I'm not trolling, pushing an agenda, or nit picking in a silly attempt to illustrate how messed up the whole is - I'm honestly curious what the language is meant to convey.

"Global average surface temperatures have risen 0.2°C above the 1990s average and 0.3°C above the 1980s average."

So the 2000s are 0.3degC above the 80s. That's 0.15degC/decade, or 1.5 degC/century. How does this compare to the latest IPCC projections?

Estimating using a linear rate of change, which I dont think is the case, though I suppose it could be approximated as such over a short period of time. It's a fair calculation, I just doubt it's steady enough to extrapolate to x/century.

Assuming the facts are true, whats the actual impact we're supposed to read from this? Over the centuries/millenia doesn't the earth go through heating/cooling cycles? It's not my field, but I believe I've read data suggesting that. One of the biggest issues has always been whether global warming was "our" fault (ie, "we're screwing up the planet!"). You see heavy handed rhetoric from both sides of this issue. I'd be much more interested in an indepth editorial on what we actually know about global climate changes over extremely long periods. Is this something to worry about, or are we simply on the upward slope of a temperature sine wave that has covered millenia?

The issue is not that there is warming which we were due for, the problem is the rate of the warming and its potential to go beyond what the natural maximum would be.

The current rate of warming appears to be quite a bit faster than is estimated in past warming periods which usually take centuries to do what we have in 50 years.

This also leads to valid concerns that the normal cycle is being disrupted and that the normal system stabilizers will be overwhelmed and lead to a runaway heating effect.

To be unhealthy for humans it will not need to raise to much, we are already seeing some of the effects around the world.

If taken as a whole it paints a frighting and bleak future. Life may survive rampant global warming but humanity would most likely not.

Should add, that's sad to see so little left of Lake Chad. I remember looking at it via Google Maps like a year ago wondering what all those strange ripples were... not realizing that it's so shallow, varies seasonally, and that it was probably seeing part of the lake bed. But even accounting for that, I wouldn't expect it to dry up so fast. Seems like a pretty good example of how human involvement, both direct (excess irrigation/overgrazing and poor management of the surrounding area) and indirect (warming climate) can destroy an important natural resource. Even one that seems renewable.

Glaciers—another climate change victim—continued their global retreat. Preliminary data suggests 2009 will have been the 19th consecutive year where more glacier ice was lost than was gained. Greenland’s glaciers that spill into the sea lost 101 square kilometers of ice, pushing total losses over 1,000 square kilometers for the decade.

This is one of the big attractors of FUD. I wonder—where does one go to provide information when another is (ex)claiming that Antarctic ice is growing, not shrinking?

"Global average surface temperatures have risen 0.2°C above the 1990s average and 0.3°C above the 1980s average."

So the 2000s are 0.3degC above the 80s. That's 0.15degC/decade, or 1.5 degC/century. How does this compare to the latest IPCC projections?

Temperature change isn't supposed to be linear. There are forcing effects, i.e. rapid warming triggers even more rapid warming. For instance, warmer temperatures cause more evaporation, water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas, causing even warmer temperatures...

Also, it appears to me that the rate of change from the 90s to the 2000s was already twice that of the previous decade: .1º C from 80s to 90s, .2ºC from the 90s up to the present. If I were to simplify like you, I could say that temperature increase is doubling every decade and by 2100 we'll have a total increase of around 400º C

EDIT:

GKH wrote:

From the article:

Quote:

...Antarctic sea ice was near normal levels this year...

I understand we can talk about increases and decreases, but how do we decide what "normal" is in this case? Is it the average over the data period? Observing exposed land/ice that hasn't been exposed in thousands of years? Conformance to some ideal amount?

It's sad that I have to add this disclaimer, but: I'm not trolling, pushing an agenda, or nit picking in a silly attempt to illustrate how messed up the whole is - I'm honestly curious what the language is meant to convey.

I agree that it's tricky to define a "normal" sea ice coverage. But it's also tricky to say that there's more total ice just by observing coverage. AFAIK new, thin ice is more prone to melting than old, thick one. Also, year-on-year changes are pretty useless for evaluating trends. There is a graphic showing decline in sea ice extent since 1953 and another clearly showing that recent years' extent is below the 1979-2000 average here.

Wasn't the late 70s a local minimum point for the last century? (No, I'm not subscribing to the Global IceAge!!! hysteria). Weren't the 50s warmer than the 70s? If so, it seems as if choosing a localized minimum point is a little disingenuous. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, too lazy to google, yet not too lazy to type. Weird.

The above snark actually scares me, too; the *local weather* has been strange for years.

We live on a planet where weather patterns can span centuries. We also live on a planet where the last ice age may have taken about 200 years to fully set in. We have only ~200 years of first hand weather data. All we are doing is guessing for the most part.

Should add, that's sad to see so little left of Lake Chad. I remember looking at it via Google Maps like a year ago wondering what all those strange ripples were... not realizing that it's so shallow, varies seasonally, and that it was probably seeing part of the lake bed. But even accounting for that, I wouldn't expect it to dry up so fast. Seems like a pretty good example of how human involvement, both direct (excess irrigation/overgrazing and poor management of the surrounding area) and indirect (warming climate) can destroy an important natural resource. Even one that seems renewable.

Edit: added a sentence for clarity

It's such a hard thing to gauge until something tangible can hit us. For me, it was reading about penguins on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antartica. As the ice shelf shrinks, penguins move further inland. Problem is, where they are now is a position where they get a small amount of daylight during winter to hunt, a couple of hours of twilight. If it shrinks enough, as it has been slowly doing, they'll wind up in a situation where there's no light in winter to work from. (source: Sci Am)

Sure, it's an entirely emotional appeal, oh noes cute penguins dying alone in the dark, but damn did it hit home with me how easily our actions can fuck with things.

So what? There's evidence that the earth is warming. Global warming is happening. Facts support it.

The REAL question everyone wants answered is, is this caused by humans, or is this just a climate cycle?

The PROBLEM is that we don't have more than 130 years of weather data to analyze so it's much easier for people to just blame humans than it is to infer that this is just a climate cycle.

Actually, we DO have data past 130 years for weather. It's not as accurate, but it certainly works for averaging out yearly data anyway.

What we do is generally take ice cores and calculate how much CO2 was in the atmosphere at the time that the ice formed, and from there we have a pretty good idea of how much the average temperature was per year.

So to say that climate change is NOT caused by humans is a bit disingenuous. It's definitely not a climate change cycle because there hasn't been a decade that was hotter than this decade in millions of years.

Right-wing radio and the sympatico talking heads will either ignore it or spin it. Ya know those "Global Warming Hoaxers™" will stop at nothing to take away our God-given™ right$ to shit on everything, consequences be-damned.

Why? I really want to know why they try to make this a political issue? Because Big Business™ shouldn't have to have regulations? We have all sorts of regulations on people. We call them "laws." Rhetorical question, I know. But their attitude just pisses me off.

Um, because some regulations are very BAD for business in the US due to the fact that other countries don't have said regulations? Take the Gulf Oil Spill, the US Gov't puts a moratorium on drilling off shore, so what do the companies do? Go to the coasts of West Africa and other countries which don't have the moratorium and make their money there.

Same thing with the clean air initiative, force all of these manufacturers to become more and more environmentally friendly (and I am not saying we shouldn't, just looking at ti realistically) and the only thing you give them is incentive to go over seas to China or down to Mexico where such regulations don't exist and where they have no interest in creating them (and that is one reason, along with the cheaper work force manufacturers have moved over seas, they don't have to go by EPA regs anymore).

End result, less money in the US and less work for US employees. With the unemployment percentage already being so high do we really want to do everything in our power to ship even more jobs overseas simply because of one accident?

And one can't say boycott or embargo those other countries and refuse to buy oil/gas from them because oil is an absolute necessity for our way of life at the present time. Personally I would love to go back to the 1950's style of living with home delivery of milk in glass bottles, one worker per household, being able to walk to the local grocery and a slower pace to life, but I'm pretty certain I am actually in the minority.

The attitude may piss you off, but I'm pretty certain it will only piss you off until your company lays you off because the cost associated with the new regulations is forcing them to cut back.

Hey folks, I heard years ago that if global warming happened Bangladesh and most of London was going to be underwater. Now I hear the IPCC says that at the end of C21 sea levels will have risen by somewhere between 18 and 59 cm. I appreciate that these predictions are not incompatible, and that 59 cm is not minor. Is it possible that if the average middle class person can cut carbon emissions by somewhere in the region of 90% over the next 100 years, that we can reverse global warming? Frankly I couldn't give a toss about glaciers or soft shell aquatic invertebrates, so my hope is that if we can stop wasting energy then virtually no harm will have been done. Experts - am I living in a dream world?

@prosperolt When confronted with the dilemma of whether to act (humans taking steps to reduce their possible impact on global warming) or not it seems to me the only reasonable response is to act. If the ship is sinking and you don't know why you need to try everything until something works. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to assume this is simply a cycle unaffected by human behavior. What if humans aren't affecting the cycle? Our planet would still be better off if we reduced our emissions. Think about cleaner air, cleaner water, healthier people etc.) I just don't see the downside.

We can discuss how we get there, which I suspect is the driving force behind much of the non-believers, but it seems logical that we should all want a cleaner planet.

@prosperolt When confronted with the dilemma of whether to act (humans taking steps to reduce their possible impact on global warming) or not it seems to me the only reasonable response is to act. If the ship is sinking and you don't know why you need to try everything until something works. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to assume this is simply a cycle unaffected by human behavior. What if humans aren't affecting the cycle? Our planet would still be better off if we reduced our emissions. Think about cleaner air, cleaner water, healthier people etc.) I just don't see the downside.

We can discuss how we get there, which I suspect is the driving force behind much of the non-believers, but it seems logical that we should all want a cleaner planet.

The main downside is that the so called externalized costs of pollution is now actually being put on the people who pollute

Deniers mainly fall into two categories. Liars and mindless parrots. 1998 was a particularly hot year. So a few years after the Liars started to say we were in a cooling cylce. Since then the mindless parrots just keep repeating it even though there have been hotter years and the trend is UP is clear to everyone who checks.

Another popular one with the liars years back was that we were at a solar maximum and it was all caused by the Sun, now the mindless parrots keep repeating this one even though we are now in the deepest solar minimum in decades.

There might be something to debate here if the deniers had more in their quiver than complete nonsense they haven't even verified, instead it was assimilated as gospel from Beck,Limbaugh, or O'Reilly.

The above snark actually scares me, too; the *local weather* has been strange for years.

We live on a planet where weather patterns can span centuries. We also live on a planet where the last ice age may have taken about 200 years to fully set in. We have only ~200 years of first hand weather data. All we are doing is guessing for the most part.

This could be the most sensible comment made so far. How dare the scientific community argue and state theory as fact on so little data. And yes the data is very little to make such grandiose claims. Make no mistake about it Eric, unless you have your head buried in the sand you can see that this is just as much political as anything else. This is sad but true. I don't care about the political sides but I would love to have enough dependable data to at least form an educated opinion. It's just not there yet.

Deniers mainly fall into two categories. Liars and mindless parrots. 1998 was a particularly hot year. So a few years after the Liars started to say we were in a cooling cylce. Since then the mindless parrots just keep repeating it even though there have been hotter years and the trend is UP.

Another popular one with the liars years back was that we were at a solar maximum and it was all caused by the Sun, now the mindless parrots keep repeating this one even though we are now in the deepest solar minimum in decades.

According to NASA, the solar minimum was in 2006. I believe that 2011 is suppose to represent the cyclical solar maximum.